


Forever

by thebasement_archivist



Category: The X-Files
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 1999-09-30
Updated: 1999-09-30
Packaged: 2018-11-20 08:57:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,744
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11332548
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thebasement_archivist/pseuds/thebasement_archivist
Summary: Pain, death, guilt, love, despair. Dark with a capital 'D'.





	Forever

**Author's Note:**

> Note from alice ttlg, the archivist: this story was originally archived at [The Basement](http://fanlore.org/wiki/The_Basement), which moved to the AO3 to ensure the stories are always available and so that authors may have complete control of their own works. To preserve the archive, I began manually importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project in June 2017. I e-mailed all creators about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact me using the e-mail address on [The Basement's collection profile](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/thebasement/profile).

 

Forever By Kix

28 October 1998  
TITLE: Forever  
AUTHOR: Kix  
CATEGORY/RATING: M/K slash, NC17 for disturbing content.  
SUMMARY: Pain, death, guilt, love, despair. Dark with a capital 'D'.  
WARNING: Character death  
DISCLAIMER: I don't own any of 'em. And after reading this, you'll be very, very glad.  
THANX: Thanx and love to Te, Kass, and Alicia for betas, editing, and friendship when I needed it most. Love you all to pieces.  
FEEDBACK: Lord... Please? But no suicide notes. To Miz Kix []   
NOTES: This is angst in its purest form. Think of it like... cocaine: May cause noses to bleed and genitals to shrink.

* * *

=========================  
Forever  
By Kix  
=========================

Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid.... The mantra followed me home like the pathetic little stray you can never find it in your heart to turn away.

I can't ignore it. I can't leave it outside my door. I have no choice.

Stupid, stupid, stupid... But it's incessant. It's incessant. Can it really last forever?

Forever is but a string of nows, they say.

He is dead.

You know, I can't understand those three words. Why can't I understand them? I'm not an imbecile. I know what they mean.

He: Pronoun. The male already named or in question: Alex Krycek.

Is: Third singular present of 'be'.

Dead: Adjective. No longer alive.

He is dead.

He's dead because of me. I'm culpable. That's what I can't understand. I killed him. I killed him. How could I have done that?

He'd told me that he knew what he was doing. He had to be left to make the arrangements. He'd told me that while he didn't doubt my abilities, he was more familiar with the alpha and omega of subterfuge.

But I, the great fucking fool I am, decided I knew better. I decided I couldn't trust him. So, I made a bargain of my own.

I knew it was dangerous. I knew I was taking a big risk. But I'd known that from the beginning, and I almost wanted him to be punished for thinking he could blaze in here again and treat me like his goddamn fucking inferior.

I almost wanted him dead.

But I never thought it'd feel like this.

Loss, and grief, and guilt, and pain, Jesus, the pain. Indescribable, nonspecific, heartwrenching pain. The hurt of the irrevocable.

I can't turn back time.

I can't bring him back.

No matter how hard I will it.

Thoughts race through my mind. A frenzy of frightened wildebeest. Rushing, stampeding across the plains, escaping a very real danger. Too fast to catch. I can't hold them. I can't still them. I can't grasp them. And the noise is deafening. Each thought calls for recognition. Each question begs for an answer. So many emotions attack my mind, demanding my attention. All at once. It's all happening at once. And it's so much, so hard, so *loud*. If I scream, will the sound silence it?

My eyes sting with the need to cry. My throat aches with the need to shout. My heart hurts with the need for his hand in mine. His warmth. His life. I want him here.

And I can't have him.

Never again.

Never.

Always.

Forever.

My fists clench. I feel my joints crack. My nails have grown a little, and if I press hard enough, they dig into the flesh of my palm, and I relish the pain.

For a few moments, it's all there is. It's real. Real pain. It's something I can understand. Something I can relate to. I try to hold onto it, but it slips out of my grasp, and I fall again. I don't hit the ground. I never hit the ground.

I close my eyes, and I see him. I see his long, lean body standing before me. His face was pale, cheeks reddened by the icy winds. His coffee-brown hair was too short to be ruffled by the breeze, but it shifted slightly, the effect like the surface of rippling water. His lips were swollen from the kiss we had just shared, and a visible bulge punctuated the front of his jeans. He smiled. I could still taste him. Dark and smoky and sweet.... And I wished for some time before they arrived. But he looked at his watch, he squeezed my hand, and he said, "Let's do this."

But it all went wrong.

He was lying on the ground, debris from the building scattered randomly about the area. The street was eerily silent after the detonation, a few dwindling fires burning themselves out in corners. It wasn't a large device. The explosion was intended to be small, localized.

He was deathly pale. Face mottled with black soot and bruising. His eyes were dull. Somewhere behind the limitless black of his pupil, I saw him. I saw his struggle. His strength. His love. And that's when I knew. I knew he blamed me.

Why was he trying to hide it?

"I'm cold," he said, and I knew exactly what he meant. I pulled him close, wrapping him tightly in my arms, inside the trench I wore.

I couldn't have been much warmer than he was, but I had to feel I was doing something.

"I need to call the paramedics, Alex," I told him, trying to stop shaking. I had to stop shaking; I couldn't let him feel my fear.

He laughed. "Don't be dense, Mulder."

"You're hurt," I told him. State the fucking obvious. That's me.

"I know that," he said. His voice was strained, and I knew it was an effort to speak. If I didn't need to hear him, I would have told him to be silent.

"Then we have to get you help."

He shook his head. "Mulder, we both know... even if they could save me, I'd be dead within a few hours at the most when news leaked out. And that, *that*, would just be degrading." He laughed again, the sound becoming a wet cough after only a few moments.

I dropped my forehead to his cheek, and I breathed. I could only smell the bitter, overwhelming smoke from the explosion. The sickly aroma of blood and death--

"You're gonna be okay, Alex," I told him. Oh, how cliche. I'm such a dickhead.

"Sure, Mulder. You know, it doesn't make it any easier to tell yourself that. Don't waste the time we have with delusions, okay?" He stopped on a wince, and if I could have felt, I know his muscles would have been stiff with agony, I know his fresh, thick, almost-black blood would have been soaking through my clothing.

"I'm sorry," I said. "I am so sorry."

His hand on my face and he really was so cold but I needed to feel him and I arched into the caress but I was so numb and I just wanted to taste him once more just once it's all I asked....

"It wasn't your fault, Mulder. It was inevitable." His voice fell to a whisper. "Nothing lasts forever."

I didn't want forever. I just wanted more.

I have to move. I have to move. I have to stop thinking. I pace, no need to look where I'm going because nothing is substantial anymore, and I can walk through walls.

The clothes Scully brought are clean and they smell of laundry detergent, not of him. It's as if I've lost every trace of what he was. I know he's gone, but this is like he never even existed.

And nobody knows.

I can't tell anyone this.

Because no one would understand.

Even I don't understand.

Confusion mingles with the pain. Like two yarns of complementary colors, knitted together to form a cloak of indestructible fabric. And, like with a fisherman's net, the more I struggle, the more I become entangled. The more trapped I am.

I feel hot liquid roll down my chin, and I raise my hand to catch it with my fingertips. When I look, the liquid is red. I've been biting my lip. I wonder why I didn't feel it before. Why didn't I realize what I was doing?

I need to ease the pressure in my mind and my chest.

Perhaps, if I bleed some more, the tension will lessen and I'll be able to breathe again?

I stumble into the kitchen, and I claw at the handle of a drawer. I yank; it opens only a little before it jars, and it won't move anymore. I can see the glint of metal inside. The knife is just beyond the reach of my fingers, and I sob in frustration at the knowledge that so close, oh so close, is the prospect of that delicious release.

But the fucking drawer won't budge. It won't--pull--fucking--kick--move. I drop to my knees, and I feel the pressure still building inside me. The pain and confusion cloak tightening its bind. The intense, screaming, relentless noise inside my head won't shut up. I need it to stop. Make it stop. I have to make it stop.

Finally, the scream breaks free from my chest, and I hold my head between my hands and let it pass through my open lips. I can't hear it. I want to hear it.

"It's not your fault, Mulder," Alex said.

"It's not your fault."

"Not your fault."

"Your fault."

"Your fault."

It's the only part of the noise I can understand. His beautiful tea-and-honey voice so full of pain saying those two words. He blames me. He really did blame me. I blame myself. I know it's stupid. I know irrational self-blame is just another aspect of grief. But this time, this time, it *was* my fault.

I fall against the worktop, my hands grasping for something, anything, and I knock a glass to the floor. It shatters. I watch it break, almost too slow to be real, and I can't seem to hear the sounds it makes.

Without thinking, without knowing, I reach out and I take a long, thin fragment of the glass in my hand. Oh, I can feel this. It's warm from sitting under the light, and it's smooth, and... oh, yes, it's so sharp. I squeeze my palm around it, and I gasp at the sensation of skin breaking, instant wetness affecting my grip. I drop it. And my hand begins to throb. Oh, God, I can feel it.

I bring my hand to my mouth, closing my lips over a ragged wound. It hurts like a bitch and it's so good so good so good....

I need more.

I need it again.

I take another sliver from the floor and I settle myself back against the cupboard door. I feel dizzy as the pressure begins to unfold. My head feels as though it could fly right off my neck.

I unbutton my shirt-cuff, pushing the loose sleeve up until my entire forearm is revealed, and I bring the glass to the fleshy area below the bend of my elbow. I almost hear the puncture now, my mind is so silent and I feel like I could float.

I make one straight incision. I'm a little surprised to see the blood. I expected the wound to leak thoughts. Orbs of colored crystal, glowing, living. But it's only blood.

Just like his blood.

All of a sudden, the noise begins again, and I cry this time. Not again. Oh, I was doing so well.

I need this to end.

I can't go on like this.

Maybe if I cut deeper....

But I know what I want.

I want to cut so deep I sever the hold I have on life.

Not so I can join him. I know I'll never be with him. Even if there were an afterlife in which soulmates are joined for eternity... we wouldn't be. He wasn't my soulmate: He was my soul.

I'm just an empty shell. A husk. And the void he created has been filled and expanded by the pain I so desperately want to end.

I want oblivion.

I don't necessarily want death. Because I'm not alive, anyway. I'm a living dead man. Or a dead living one. There's a difference between the two that I can't quite distinguish.

I have nothing left. I know that I no longer have the passion for my work. I haven't for such a long time. They'll take that away from me anyway, no doubt. Harboring a known felon.... Conspiring to obstruct justice.... Sedition. My career is over.

What do I have left but Scully? Who doesn't know me anymore. Who would judge me. Who would hate me.

There's no incentive to be found. There's no longer any reason for me to live.

There's always been reason for me to die.

Alex was the only one who knew how to make it better. I gave him strength, and he gave it back to me when I needed it. But he took it, and he kept it, and it was lost with him. I'm alone, and I'm falling apart.

They took my gun from me at the police department. They took my fingerprints, and my DNA, and my hair, and the clothes I wore, and my statement, and they took my gun.

Although death by a bullet through the brain is so unpoetic.

Alex would hate it.

But Alex wouldn't know. Because Alex is dead.

Oh, holy shit, Alex is dead.

But a gunshot is so thorough, goddamn it. There's no certainty in slitting your wrists. You have to get it just right. Long, and deep, and down the vein, not across....

An overdose is an option. Although still risky. There's always the chance of discovery, then being forced to live with permanent organ damage and the knowledge that I was, and will always be, a failure. But it's a nice way to go; some tranqs, some booze, sleep, nothing.

But, shit, no tranqs. No booze, either. When did this become so difficult?

I could always cut my throat. Right through the jugular, baby. Oh yeah.

No. I can't. I can't do that.

Why not?

I stab at my arm with the shard of glass once again in frustration, throwing my head back at the flow of the pain through the circuitry of my veins, my arteries. It stops to swell savagely in my heart, and then rests in the throbbing vein in my neck. I can feel it there. I just have to make the cut. One hard slice and that will be it.

I'm not afraid.

Just ashamed.

Ashamed that this is all that's left. Ashamed that I caused it all.

I should have learned that I can't change things. That when I play the elitist, I just screw up.

But, God, I never learn. I never fucking learn.

Alex tried to tell me but I wouldn't listen.

I'd said, "No, Alex, I got some information...." He'd looked at me warily, but agreed. Like always.

I'd been wrong, of course.

I'm always wrong.

And now he is dead because of it. I am dead because of it.

I raise my hand to my throat, now. My eyes closed, seeing his expression of defeat as he expelled a final breath. His pretty pink mouth still beautiful so soon after death and I had wanted to bend and kiss it for the last time. The wail of sirens had stopped me, and he was taken from my arms before I could.

I wanted to scream that they couldn't zip up the body bag, because he's claustrophobic. It was the only fear he'd ever shared with me. It wasn't the only fear I knew of, though. He was afraid of sleep. He was afraid of love. He was afraid of death.

He'd faced all of those fears with me watching.

The prick of the point, and then the smoothness of the sharp edge. And all it will take is a push and a drag. Fast, clean, and then it's over.

"Nothing lasts forever."

I hope not.

-end-

Your comments on this story would be absolutely invaluable. Please. Tell me what you thought at either or 

xXx

Reality is for people who can't face drugs

xXx  
All I want is destruction/   
Wanna see it crumble beneath my toes/   
Smell the way my sore eyes burn away/   
That's all that I can have today  
  -- Skunk Anansie, "All I Want"  
xXx

What drives you on can drive you mad -- Garbage, "Stupid Girl"


End file.
